How To Use Instagram Ads

Instagram popular for food pictures and selfies is also a great platform for businesses. According to SproutSocial:

“Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has racked up more than 400 million users, and more than half (59%) of them are on the platform daily—including 35% who visit several times a day. With so many people using the photo-sharing app, there’s a great chance that some of them are interested in your business. If you’re not happy with your current reach, Instagram ads might be your strategy’s missing link.”

Some other mind blowing Instagram statistics:

75% of Instagram users are outside the US

Over 60% of users log in daily, making it the second most engaged network after Facebook

30% of internet users are now on Instagram

90 percent of Instagram users are younger than 35

Over 40 billion photos have been shared

Instagram clocks up 3.5 billion likes every day

On an average day, 80 million photos are shared

Instagram usage has doubled in the last two years

Engagement with brands on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 times higher than Twitter! So if you haven’t started using Instagram for advertising, here are the basics:

There are three kinds of Instagram ads you can create:

Photo Ads: You always want to use storytelling when marketing your brand, so tell your story through pictures. Though simple, it catches your audience’s eye.

Video Ads: If just pictures don’t do it for you, put together a video ad and combine pictures and words to sell your brand. “You can share videos up to 60 seconds long and in landscape format.”

Carousel Ads: According to business.instagram.com, “Carousel ads bring an additional layer of depth to photo ads. People can swipe to see additional images and a call to action button takes them to a website to learn more.”

Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, you’ll need a Facebook account and business page to open an ad account. You can create your ads using two different methods, Ad Creation or Power Editor.

Here’s how to create your ad with Ad Creation. Once you’re in ad creation, choose one of the following objectives for your ad:

Once you’ve chosen an objective, type the name of your campaign, then set your ad’s audience. You can choose audience characteristics such as age, gender, interests, politics and a ton of other options. Next, set a budget for your ad and schedule how often it will go out to your audience. For more information on how to budget, check out Facebook Help.

Now to make sure your ad will only run on Instagram, make sure all of the other boxes are unchecked.

In the Creative section, choose your Facebook Page to represent your business on Facebook’s News Feed. Choose an Instagram account to display your ad on. If you don’t have an Instagram account, your Facebook Page can be used to represent your business on Instagram.

Next add photos or videos for your ad and fill out the website you want to send traffic to, the ad text and call-to-action button type. Click Show Advanced Options for additional creative options. That’s pretty much it. Review your ad and if it’s all good, hit “place order”. You can track your statistics using ad manager.

There are a lot more things that can get pretty advanced like adding tracking pixels, split testing landing pages and other cool stuff but for now, you can get a basic ad up and start generating leads!